• Reader letter of the week: “Thanks again for sending the 3-chapter ‘preview’ to your new book. I absolutely loved it. Many, many LOL moments. When I read your writing, I am constantly saying to myself: ‘That's hysterical, how did he think of that - brilliant!’ I can't wait to read the rest of the story. If you don't have multiple publishers fighting over the rights to publish this book, then it will confirm my suspicion that publishers are lower than whale poop.”
Eric R., Pittsburgh
• Can’t wait to read the first three chapters of “Evan & Elle?” Shoot me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to share.
• I’ll be Zooming it up today from 4 to 5 p.m. for the Pennsylvania Library Association. Topic: “Fred Rogers & the Benefits of Being Defiantly Kind.” Promo video most of you have probably seen … right here.
• This week’s “Use All The Crayons!” colorful living tips This week's Instagram medley
Today’s theme: Harvest
• Health tip: The fewer the ingredients, the better/healthier the food. For instance, apples are made entirely of apple.
• Find logical reasons for disliking the vegetables you eat only for healthful reasons. For instance, you can say your dislike of broccoli makes perfect sense because no one’s ever tried to smoke it or use it to make broccoli wine.
• It had a handsome leading man, an earnest sidekick and international intrigue, but there was something about Ohio Five-O that never caught on. Oh, and Ohio Five-O had scenic corn locales.
• Devote a weekend to trying to develop a fruity superhero who shoots apple juice out his wrists. Yes, watch out! It’s Cider-Man!
• Maintain Concord grapes have a Constitution that begins, “We, the purple …”
• Realize even the most successful vegetable farmers are doomed to live in the seediest parts of town.
• If we can make a Twinkie whose taste will endure through a nuclear winter how come we can’t make a vegetable that tastes like a Twinkie?
• In my quest to find people whose names make them perfectly suited for their occupations, I'm now searching for a farmer named Doug Root.
• Am disappointed to learn Asheville, NC, was named after Gov. Sam Ashe and not piles of ash. Next question: Was Ashe a tobacco farmer?
• Why did the grass farmer cross the road? To get to the other sod.
Unrelateds …
• I become furious anytime I check into a Best Western hotel and can't find "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" on TV.
• I propose they rename phone book "The Big Book of Names & Numbers of People You Don't Know, Will Never Meet & Will Never Call.
• Drinkers who believe their bladders are half empty are pissimists.
Related Blog Post
"Have a cow man; just don't choose the sex" (June ’09)
A recent report shows that any parent eager to pre-determine the sex of their offspring ought to pause and consider the cow. Yes, in what is surely an indicator of what’s to come for mankind, dairy farmers have for the past three years been given the opportunity to select the sex of their cattle. They got to tinker with the divine selection ordained by God and Mother Nature that had previously set the balance at roughly 50-50. Here’s basically how the new draft went: girl, girl, girl, boy, girl, girl, girl, boy, girl, girl . . . Of course, dairy farmers interested in producing more milk would want to breed more milk producers. What they didn’t foresee was that the result would be, duh, too much milk.
Zeitgust Word of the Week (a word I made up with the goal of getting it into an actual dictionary) …
Parroty: The conditional cliches that emerge when nearly every coach and every player from every NFL team says, win or lose, the exact same thing.
• Author’s note …
You’re thinkin’ ‘bout it, aren’tcha! Should I donate to support this thing I look forward to and always enjoy. The answer is … Yes! Give! Give! Give! Surprise yourself and me with an unexpected blast of generosity. (PayPal, Venmo, 874 Solomon Temple Rd., Latrobe, Pa, 15650).
All Chris’s books can be purchased through www.ChrisRodell.com